May I suggest a possible better solution for this unusual circumstance? When a literal string is output -- one not expected to have control characters -- convert those to some slash form: ./oops.rb:9005:in `open': No such file or directory - '/w/x/y/z\n' (Errno::ENOENT) Then you can single-quote the string and the exception id will still correctly appear on the next line. Hal > Hi, > > In message "[ruby-talk:02229] Re: Misleading IO error message" > on 00/03/28, schneik / us.ibm.com <schneik / us.ibm.com> writes: > > |I got an error message of the following form: > | > | ./oops.rb:9005:in `open': No such file or directory - /w/x/y/z > (Errno::ENOENT) > | > | > |But there was such a directory! > > Ok, wrap the filename by `'. But current implementaion puts exception > names right after the first newline, then it would be: > > ./oops.rb:9005:in `open': No such file or directory - '/w/x/y/z > (Errno::ENOENT) > ' > > It's still misleading in some degree. Maybe little bit better though. > > matz.